Episode 84: Jono Bacon on Building Sustainable Communities

Guest Jono Bacon Panelists Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Show
Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! The podcast where we talk about
sustaining open source for the long haul. Today, we have as our
special guest, Jono Bacon, a self-employed Community and
Collaboration Consultant, author, speaker, and Founder of Jono
Bacon Consulting. Jono tells us about his interesting journey with
his career, the diversity of his clients, a concern he has with
chat channels, and why community is the most important thing in
open source. He talks about developers and how to help them see
their value and potential to achieve their goals. We learn more
about some of the things Jono wrote, including his most recent
book, People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your
Business, Brands, and Teams, _and how he got the _“star power”
behind it. Also, he also shares an awesome story when he worked at
XPRIZE, and something that made him realize how unique the open
source world really is. Go ahead and download this episode to hear
much more! [00:01:46] Jono tells us how he ended up doing what he
does. [00:03:36] We find out the type of clients Jono has and how
he gets them often through referrals. [00:06:34] Jono talks about
how he feels about Discord, Discourse, Gitter, and the open source
IRC replacements that are going on right now. [00:09:42] Richard
asks Jono what he thinks the value is of having these side
conversations, and how does that help community members have better
engagement and build value for them. [00:13:28] Jono shares his
opinion on one of the flaws with individuals in open source and why
community is the most important thing. [00:16:46] Richard wonders
how Jono balances the needs of emotionally connecting to everyone
in your group and how he makes sure that developers know there is a
balance to be met to have the community thrive. [00:20:30] We learn
about some things Jono wrote and he tells us about his most recent
book, _People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your
Business, Brands, and Teams. _Justin wonders how he got the “star
power,” such as Jamie Hyneman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in his
book. [00:28:01] We hear an awesome story when Jono worked at
XPRIZE and how personalities of people made him realize how unique
the open source world really is. [00:31:42] Richard asks Jono if
there are any challenges, anything open source needs help with, and
what is down the road for us. [00:36:44] Find out where you can
follow Jono online and learn more about what he does. Quotes
[00:07:25] “The second priority that I’ve got is by extension, that
anybody who joins the community should get amazing value out of
it.” [00:07:32] “As far as I concerned, if you join a community and
you don’t get value out of it, that community hasn’t earned you.”
[00:07:56] “One of the concerns I have with chat channels and chat
services in general and I’d include Slack, Mattermost, Discord,
Git, all of these, is that by definition, it’s a linear stream of
consciousness. So Slack claims that they’ve got history and you can
kind of unlock history for example if you pay for it. It just
doesn’t work.” [00:08:41] “That’s why I think even Slack, don’s say
this is for community building, it’s for building teams.”
[00:10:00] “So, to me what brings people into communities is
they’re there to solve a problem. They’re there to improve their
future state, such as they’re using pieces of open source software,
and they want to make better use of it and solve their problems or
build their applications.” [00:10:16] “I think what people stay for
in the community is an intrinsic sense of belonging and a sense
that this is just a good place for me to be.” [00:13:26] “My take
on this is I think one of the flaws of a lot of open source
communities, not so much communities but more individuals, is that
they always talk about the most important thing is code, is getting
code that can be created and shared with a group of people.”
[00:13:57] “But to me, I’m engineering for impact here, whether
you’re building a little project to just make certain types of unit
testing easier, or whether you’re building a replacement for a
major piece of proprietary software.” [00:14:48] “ The reason why
I’m so passionate about community is because if you take a hundred
people inside of those hundred people, there are so many ideas and
insights and experiences and skills, and so much time available.
Then when we can get all of that out into the open, it makes us the
best we can be as people.” [00:17:28] “But, I think most people, a
much more kind of, I guess you could say practical than that, and
they will do something if they can see the value, and it’s worth
it, and they can achieve their broader outcomes.” [00:18:36] “You
need to be inclusive, not just in terms of a rich demographic of
people, which is always important, diversity of race and sexuality
and all those wonderful things.” [00:18:48] “But just a diversity
of ideas and letting people come in and take your little baby,
which is this project, and just put new clothes on it and see what
it can do.” [00:19:21] “It’s kind of like someone says I’d like to
learn to cook and I basically give them everything they need to be
a Michelin Star Chef.” [00:27:31] “Eric Holscher probably has had a
larger impact on the world. Read the Docs is amazing, and you know
he’s a really down to earth guy who’s not famous who you wouldn’t
recognize.” [00:33:01] “The platform should be holding your hand
and showing you how to do.” [00:33:47] “I would also go as far to
say that I think we, as a community, need to get over this
obsession with metrics.” [00:34:14] “I would much rather say, okay,
what are the things we don’t know today and what are the three
metrics that we can use to figure that out?” [00:34:37] “Sure, I
can see, for example, all of these metrics about how a project in
GitHub is performing, but I think what most developers want to know
is what does normal look like?” [00:35:00] “I think if we really
want to build scale with open source, which I think we can, and
we’ve seen scale happening, open source is real in the world, but
the platforms have got to help that long tail of projects succeed
more with community building.” [00:35:42] “So to me, diversity is
not just a great code of conduct, but also it’s great leadership,
and it’s great moderation, and it’s inspiring diverse collaboration
as well.” Spotlight [00:37:46] Justin’s spotlight is Bitnami.
[00:38:14] Richard’s spotlight is The Book of Knights by Yves
Meynard. [00:38:48] Jono’s spotlight is a project called Arches.
Links Jono Bacon Website (https://www.jonobacon.com/) Jono Bacon
Twitter (https://twitter.com/jonobacon) Jono Bacon Linkedin
(https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonobacon/) [People Powered: How
Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brand, and Teams by Jono
Bacon](https://www.amazon.com/People-Powered-Communities-Supercharge-Business/dp/1400214882/ref=sr11?dchild=1&keywords=people+powered&qid=1621619908&sr=8-1)
[The Art of Community: Building the New Age of Participation by
Jono
Bacon](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Community-Building-New-Participation/dp/1449312063/ref=sr14?dchild=1&keywords=jono+bacon&qid=1621620040&sr=8-4)
Bitnami (https://bitnami.com/) [The Book of Knights by Yves
Meynard](https://www.amazon.com/Book-Knights-Yves-Meynard/dp/0312864825/ref=sr11?crid=W2ZBQ8JJ2WPQ&dchild=1&keywords=the+book+of+knights+by+yves+meynard&qid=1621633116&sprefix=the+book+of+knights%2Caps%2C162&sr=8-1)
Arches Project (https://www.archesproject.org/) Credits Produced by
Richard Littauer (https://www.burntfen.com/) Edited by Paul M. Bahr
at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/) Show notes by
DeAnn Bahr at Peachtree Sound (https://www.peachtreesound.com/)
Special Guest: Jono Bacon.